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Originally Posted by edale
Interesting that you include DC with NY here. I lived in DC for a couple years, and it didn't feel super diverse to me. Certainly nothing like New York or Los Angeles. Fairly small and not very visible Hispanic population, not a ton of Asians (compared to NY, LA, SF). The white population in DC feels decidedly less ethnic than the other big cities in the Northeast corridor. There is a substantial African population- especially Ethiopian and Somali (I think), and that was definitely noticeable while living there. Of course a large AA community, too.
I've not been to Houston, so I can't comment on it. But to me, the cities that feel the most diverse in the US are 1) NYC and 2) LA, and then a big gap to the next 'tier' of DC, Chicago, SF.
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I think the majority of DC's diversity is located outside of DC proper, in Montgomery county (that's whay all these places like Gaithersburg, Rockville, Olney, Wheaton, Germantown, Silver Spring, etc. always pop up on these "diversity" lists) and to a somewhat smaller extent throughout Northern VA.
It's a very suburban population, with a majority of the non-white/black population being foreign-born. The DC metro area is estimated to have over 1.5M immigrants currently. That is one of the big things I notice that gives a diverse international flavor to NYC and DC, that I at least have not experienced to the same extent in other large US cities (i.e., I don't think of 10th generation Mexican-Americans in California as "diverse").
Gotta say that I'm somewhat surprised that you didn't recognize much of an Hispanic population... it's certainly not small, and definitely visible throughout the area. I believe it is around 1M people. That's significant any way you look at it.